Immediate effect sheds national light on Michigan, so what?

Every Thursday we speak with Susan Demas, political analyst for Michigan Information and Research Service, and Ken Sikkema, former Senate Majority Leader and Senior Policy Fellow at Public Sector Consultants.

This week it’s all about the politics and policy behind immediate effect, and why it's gotten some national attention.

Hundred of bills have passed in the Michigan legislature with immediate effect tacked on. Democrats have cried foul, and issued a court challenge accusing Republicans of not taking required roll call votes.

This gets into a lot of procedural specifics and we’ve been reporting on this for a couple of weeks. Then suddenly, it hits the national stage when Rachel Maddow, a MSNBC host, picked up the story. Maddow called it “revolutionary and radical beyond radical.”

Demas says, “I think Maddow needs to calm down and maybe spend a little time in Michigan before she starts reporting on the intricacies of legislative procedure here.”

According to Sikkema, more than 90% of bills passed in the last 25 or 30 years got immediate effect. “I was elected in 1986, and the first 6 years I was in the House I was in the minority…the same thing occurred to me that House Democrats are complaining about today.”

So, could there be backlash for Republicans? “That’s certainly what House Democrats are aiming for here,” Demas says. “This is part of their ongoing, Republican corruption theme, and their assertion that they [Republicans] are not doing a good job.”

Sikkema adds, “The fact that the Democrats for the first time in modern memory decided to try to get the courts to intervene and decide what the House rules are going to be, I think is indicative of the polarization and partisanship that’s exhibited in politics today.”